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President Harry Truman's Thermonuclear Weapon

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President Harry Truman in 1950 made the decision to further research and product thermonuclear weapon (atomicheritage). On July 25,1950 Truman wrote to Crawford H. Greenewalt, President of E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (atomicheritage). He wrote to these men because he had concerns about the design of the h-bomb and wanted them to construct it. On February 24,1950 the joint chiefs of staff requested the president approve all-out advancements of thermonuclear weaponry. After the NSC gave permission Truman approved the request on March 10th. This lead to the mass production and delivery of thermonuclear weapons. The designers of the h-bomb played a huge role in its being so powerful and destructive. Stanislaus Ulam was one of the designers …show more content…

These stages are fission,fusion and then fission again. “The first stage, called the "trigger" (the black ball at the top), is a small plutonium bomb similar to the one dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. The energy release at this stage is mainly due to nuclear fission -- because the atoms of plutonium are split. Tritium is often added to the centre of the plutonium core to "boost" the fission explosion with some additional fusion energy. Boosted or not, however, the only importance of this first-stage explosion is to irradiate and heat the material in the central column to 100 million degrees celsius so that a much more powerful fusion reaction can be started there (ccnr)(Howard Morland)”.“The second stage explosion is due to nuclear fusion in the central column. The main fusion reaction involves concentrated deuterium and tritium (both heavy isotopes of hydrogen) -- which become spontaneously available when neutrons from the first stage explosion bombard a solid material called "lithium deuteride" located in the central column. When this hydrogen-rich mix is heated to 100 million degrees, the deuterium and tritium atoms "fuse" together, releasing enormous amounts of energy. This is the "H" or "thermonuclear" part of the bomb (ccnr) (Howard Morland)”.” Then comes the third stage. The fusion reaction gives off an incredible burst of extremely powerful neutrons -- so powerful that they can split or "fission" atoms of uranium-238 (called

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